The next day was Xmas. I got a lot of things, including the necklace, and a mending basket from Sis, with the hope that it would make me tidey, and father had bought me a set of Silver Fox, which mother did not approve of, it being too expencive for a young girl to wear, according to her. I must say that for an hour or two I was happy enough.
But the afternoon was terrable. We keep open house on Xmas afternoon, and father makes a champagne punch, and somebody pours tea, although nobody drinks it, and there are little cakes from the Club,and the house is decorated with poin—(Memo: Not in the Dictionery and I cannot spell it, although not usualy troubled as to spelling.)
At eleven o’clock the mail came in, and mother sorted it over, while father took a gold piece out to the post-man.
There were about a million cards, and mother glanced at the addresses and passed them round. But suddenly she frowned. There was a small parcel, addressed to me.
“This looks like a Gift, Barbara,” she said. And preceded to open it.
My heart skipped two beats, and then hamered. Mother’s mouth was set as she tore off the paper and opened the box. There was a card, which she glanced at, and underneath, was a book of poems.
“Love Lyrics,” said mother, in a terrable voice. “To Barbara, from H——”
“Mother——” I began, in an ernest tone.
“A child of mine recieving such a book from a man!” she went on. “Barbara, I am speachless.”
But she was not speachless. If she was speachless for the next half hour, I would hate to hear her really converse. And all that I could do was to bear it. For I had made a Frankenstein—see the book read last term by the Literary Society—not out of grave-yard fragments, but from malted milk tablets, so to speak, and now it was pursuing me to an early grave. For I felt that I simply could not continue to live.
“Now—where does he live?”
“I—don’t know, mother.”
“You sent him a Letter.”
“I don’t know where he lives, anyhow.”
“Leila,” mother said, “will you ask Hannah to bring my smelling salts?”
“Aren’t you going to give me the book?” I asked. “It—it sounds interesting.”
“You are shameless,” mother said, and threw the thing into the fire. A good many of my things seemed to be going into the fire at that time. I cannot help wondering what they would have done if it had all happened in the summer, and no fires burning. They would have felt quite helpless, I imagine.
Father came back just then, but he did not see the Book, which was then blazing with a very hot red flame. I expected mother to tell him, and I daresay I should not have been surprised to see my furs follow the book. I had got into the way of expecting to see things burning that do not belong in a fireplace. But mother did not tell him.
I have thought over this a great deal, and I beleive that now I understand. Mother was unjustly putting the blame for everything on this School, and mother had chosen the School. My father had not been much impressed by the catalogue. “Too much dancing room and not enough tennis courts,” he had said. This, of course, is my father’s opinion. Not mine.
The real reason, then, for mother’s silence was that she disliked confessing that she made a mistake in her choice of a School.
I ate very little Luncheon and my only comfort was my seed pearls. I was wearing them, for fear the door-bell would ring, and a Letter or flowers would arrive from H. In that case I felt quite sure that someone, in a frenzy, would burn the Pearls also.
The afternoon was terrable. It rained solid sheets, and Patrick, the butler, gave notice three hours after he had recieved his Xmas presents, on account of not being let off for early mass.
But my father’s punch is famous, and people came, and stood around and buzzed, and told me I had grown and was almost a young lady. And Tommy Gray got out of his cradle and came to call on me, and coughed all the time, with a whoop. He developed the whooping cough later. He had on his first long trousers, and a pair of lavender Socks and a Tie to match. He said they were not exactly the same shade, but he did not think it would be noticed. Hateful child!
At half past five, when the place was jamed, I happened to look up. Carter Brooks was in the hall, and behind him was H. He had seen me before I saw him, and he had a sort of sickley grin, meant to denote joy. I was talking to our Bishop at the time, and he was asking me what sort of services we had in the school chapel.
I meant to say “non-sectarian,” but in my surprize and horror I regret to say that I said, “vegetarian.” Carter Brooks came over to me like a cat to a saucer of milk, and pulled me off into a corner.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I ’phoned mama, and she said to bring him. He’s known as Grosvenor here, of course. They’ll never suspect a thing. Now, do I get a small ‘thank you’?”
“I won’t see him.”
“Now look here, Bab,” he protested, “you two have got to make this thing up. You are a pair of Idiots, quarreling over nothing. Poor old Hal is all broken up. He’s sensative. You’ve got to remember how sensative he is.”
“Go away,” I cried, in broken tones. “Go away, and take him with you.”
“Not until he had spoken to your Father,” he observed, setting his jaw. “He’s here for that, and you know it. You can’t play fast and loose with a man, you know.”
“Don’t you dare to let him speak to father!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s between you to, of course,” he said. “It’s not up to me. Tell him yourself, if you’ve changed your mind. I don’t intend,” he went on, impressively, “to have any share in ruining his life.”
“Oh piffle,” I said. I am aware that this is slang, and does not belong in a Theme. But I was driven to saying it.
I got through the crowd by using my elbows. I am afraid I gave the Bishop quite a prod, and I caught Mr. Andrews on his rotateing waistcoat. But I was desparate.
Alas, I was too late.
The caterer’s man, who had taken Patrick’s place in a hurry, was at the punch bowl, and father was gone. I was just in time to see him take H. into his library and close the door.
Here words fail me. I knew perfectly well that beyond that door H, whom I had invented and who therefore simply did not exist, was asking for my Hand. I made up my mind at once to run away and go on the stage, and I had even got part way up the stairs, when I remembered that, with a dollar for the picture and five dollars for the violets and three dollars for the hat pin I had given Sis, and two dollars and a quarter for mother’s handkercheif case, I had exactly a dollar and seventy-five cents in the world.
I was trapped.
I went up to my room, and sat and waited. Would father be violent, and throw H. out and then come upstairs, pale with fury and disinherit me? Or would the whole Familey conspire together, when the people had gone, and send me to a convent? I made up my mind, if it was the convent, to take the veil and be a nun. I would go to nurse lepers, or something, and then, when it was too late, they would be sorry.
The stage or the convent, nun or actress? Which?
I left the door open, but there was only the sound of revelry below. I felt then that it was to be the convent. I pinned a towel around my face, the way the nuns wear whatever they call them, and from the side it was very becoming. I really did look like JuliaMarlowe, especialy as my face was very sad and tradgic.
At something before seven every one had gone, and I heard Sis and mother come upstairs to dress for dinner. I sat and waited, and when I heard father I got cold all over. But he went on by, and I heard him go into mother’s room and close the door. Well, I knew I had to go through with it, although my life was blasted. So I dressed and went downstairs.
Father was the first down.He came down whistling.
It is perfectly true. I could not beleive my ears.
He approached me with a smileing face.
“Well, Bab,” he said, exactly as if nothing had happened, “have you had a nice day?”
He had the eyes of a bacilisk, that creature of Fable.
“I’ve had a lovely day, Father,” I replied. I could be bacilisk-ish also.
There is a mirror over the drawing room mantle, and he turned me around until we both faced it.
“Up to my ears,” he said, referring to my heighth. “And Lovers already! Well, I daresay we must make up our minds to lose you.”
“I won’t be lost,” I declared, almost violently. “Of course, if you intend to shove me off your hands, to the first Idiot who comes along and pretends a lot of stuff, I——”
“My dear child!” said father, looking surprised. “Such an outburst! All I was trying to say, before your mother comes down, is that I—well, that I understand and that I shall not make my little girl unhappy by—er—by breaking her Heart.”
“Just what do you mean by that, father?”
He looked rather uncomfortable, being one who hates to talk sentament.
“It’s like this, Barbara,” he said. “If you want to marry this young man—and you have made it very clear that you do—I am going to see that you do it. You are young, of course, but after all your dear mother was not much older than you are when I married her.”
“Father!” I cried, from an over-flowing heart.
“I have noticed that you are not happy, Barbara,” he said. “And I shall not thwart you, or allow you to be thwarted. In affairs of the Heart, you are to have your own way.”
“I want to tell you something!” I cried. “I willnotbe cast off! I——”
“Tut, tut,” said Father. “Who is casting you off? I tell you that I like the young man, and give you my blessing, or what is the present-day equivelent for it, and you look like a figure of Tradgedy!”
But I could endure no more. My own father had turned on me and was rending me, so to speak. With a breaking heart and streaming eyes I flew to my Chamber.
There, for hours I paced the floor.
Never, I determined, would I marry H. Better death, by far. He was a scheming Fortune-hunter, but to tell the family that was to confess all. And Iwould never confess. I would run away before I gave Sis such a chance at me. I would run away, but first I would kill Carter Brooks.
Yes, I was driven to thoughts of murder. It shows how the first false step leads down and down, to crime and even to death. Oh never, never, gentle reader, take that first False Step. Who knows to what it may lead!
“One false Step is never retreived.” Gray—On a Favorite Cat.
I reflected also on how the woman in the book had ruined her life with a letter. “The written word does not change,” she had said. “It remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life.”
“Apparent life” was exactly what my letter had given to H. Frankenstein. That was what I called him, in my agony. I felt that if only I had never written the Letter there would have been no trouble. And another awful thought came to me: Was there an H after all? Could there be an H?
Once the French teacher had taken us to the theater in New York, and a woman sitting on a chair and covered with a sheet, had brought a man out of a perfectly empty Cabinet, by simply willing to do it. The Cabinet was empty, for four respectible looking men went up and examined it, and one even measured it with a Tape-measure.
She had materialised him, out of nothing.
And while I had had no Cabinet, there are many things in this world “that we do not dream of in ourPhilosophy.” Was H. a real person, or a creature of my disordered brain? In plain and simple language,could there be such a Person?
I feared not.
And if there was no H, really, and I married him, where would I be?
There was a ball at the Club that night, and the Familey all went. No one came to say good-night to me, and by half past ten I was alone with my misery. I knew Carter Brooks would be at the ball, and H also, very likely, dancing around as agreably as if he really existed, and I had not made him up.
I got the book from Sis’s room again, and re-read it. The woman in it had been in great trouble, too, with her husband cleaning his revolver and making his will. And at last she had gone to the apartments of the man who had her letters, in a taxicab covered with a heavy veil, and had got them back. He had shot himself when she returned—the husband—but she burned the letters and then called a Doctor, and he was saved. Not the doctor, of course. The husband.
The villain’s only hold on her had been the letters, so he went to South Africa and was gored by an elephant, thus passing out of her life.
Then and there I knew that I would have to get my letter back from H. Without it he was powerless. The trouble was that I did not know where he was staying. Even if he came out of a Cabinet, the Cabinet would have to be somewhere, would it not?
I felt that I would have to meet gile with gile.And to steal one’s own letter is not really stealing. Of course if he was visiting any one and pretending to be a real person, I had no chance in the world. But if he was stopping at a hotel I thought I could manage. The man in the book had had an apartment, with a Japanese servant, who went away and drew plans of American Forts in the kitchen and left the woman alone with the desk containing the Letter. But I daresay that was unusualy lucky and not the sort of thing to look forward to.
With me, to think is to act. Hannah was out, it being Xmas and her brother-in-law having a wake, being dead, so I was free to do anything I wanted to.
First I called the Club and got Carter Brooks on the telephone.
“Carter,” I said, “I—I am writing a letter. Where is—where does H. stay?”
“Who?”
“H.—Mr. Grosvenor.”
“Why, bless your ardent little Heart! Writing, are you? It’s sublime, Bab!”
“Where does he live?”
“And is it all alone you are, on Xmas Night!” he burbled. (This is a word from Alice in Wonderland, and although not in the dictionery, is quite expressive.)
“Yes,” I replied, bitterly. “I am old enough to be married off without my consent, but I am not old enough for a real Ball. It makes me sick.”
“I can smuggle him here, if you want to talk to him.”
“Smuggle!” I said, with scorn. “There is no need to smuggle him. The Familey is crazy about him. They are flinging me at him.”
“Well, that’s nice,” he said. “Who’d have thought it! Shall I bring him to the ’phone?”
“I don’t want to talk to him. I hate him.”
“Look here,” he observed, “if you keep that up, he’ll begin to beleive you. Don’t take these little quarrels too hard, Barbara. He’s so happy to-night in the thought that you——”
“Does he live in a Cabinet, or where?”
“In a what? I don’t get that word.”
“Don’t bother. Where shall I send his letter?”
Well, it seemed he had an apartment at the Arcade, and I rang off. It was after eleven by that time, and by the time I had got into my school mackintosh and found a heavy veil of mother’s and put it on, it was almost half past.
The house was quiet, and as Patrick had gone, there was no one around in the lower Hall. I slipped out and closed the door behind me, and looked for a taxicab, but the veil was so heavy that I hailed our own limousine, and Smith had drawn up at the curb before I knew him.
“Where to, lady?” he said. “This is a private car, but I’ll take you anywhere in the city for a dollar.”
A flush of just indignation rose to my cheek, at the knowledge that Smith was using our car for a taxicab!And just as I was about to speak to him severely, and threaten to tell father, I remembered, and walked away.
“Make it seventy-five cents,” he called after me. But I went on. It was terrable to think that Smith could go on renting our car to all sorts of people, covered with germs and everything, and that I could never report it to the Familey.
I got a real taxi at last, and got out at the Arcade, giving the man a quarter, although ten cents would have been plenty as a tip.
I looked at him, and I felt that he could be trusted.
“This,” I said, holding up the money, “is the price of Silence.”
But if he was trustworthy he was not subtile, and he said:
“The what, miss?”
“If any one asks if you have driven me here,you have not,” I explained, in an impressive manner.
He examined the quarter, even striking a match to look at it. Then he replied: “I have not!” and drove away.
Concealing my nervousness as best I could, I entered the doomed Building. There was only a hall boy there, asleep in the elevator, and I looked at the thing with the names on it. “Mr. Grosvenor” was on the fourth floor.
I wakened the boy, and he yawned and took me to the fourth floor. My hands were stiff with nervousness by that time, but the boy was half asleep, andevadently he took me for some one who belonged there, for he said “Goodnight” to me, and went on down. There was a square landing with two doors, and “Grosvenor” was on one. I tried it gently. It was unlocked.
“Facilus descensus in Avernu.”
I am not defending myself. What I did was the result of desparation. But I cannot even write of my sensations as I stepped through that fatal portal, without a sinking of the heart. I had, however, had suficient forsight to prepare analabi. In case there was some one present in the apartment I intended to tell a falshood, I regret to confess, and to say that I had got off at the wrong floor.
There was a sort of hall, with a clock and a table, and a shaded electric lamp, and beyond that the door was open into a sitting room.
There was a small light burning there, and the remains of a wood fire in the fireplace. There was no Cabinet however.
Everything was perfectly quiet, and I went over to the fire and warmed my hands. My nails were quite blue, but I was strangly calm. I took off mother’s veil, and my mackintosh, so I would be free to work, and I then looked around the room. There were a number of photographs of rather smart looking girls, and I curled my lip scornfully. He might have fooled them but he could not decieve me. And it added to my bitterness to think that at that moment the villain was dancing—and flirting probably—while I was driven toactual theft to secure the Letter that placed me in his power.
When I had stopped shivering I went to his desk. There were a lot of letters on the top, all addressed to him as Grosvenor. It struck me suddenly as strange that if he was only visiting, under an assumed name, in order to see me, that so many people should be writing to him as Mr. Grosvenor. And it did not look like the room of a man who was visiting, unless he took a freight car with him on his travels.
There was a mystery.All at once I knew it.
My letter was not on the desk, so I opened the top drawer. It seemed to be full of bills, and so was the one below it. I had just started on the third drawer, when a terrable thing happened.
“Hello!” said some one behind me.
I turned my head slowly, and my heart stopped.
The porteres into the passage had opened, and a Gentleman in his evening clothes was standing there.
“Just sit still, please,” he said, in a perfectly cold voice. And he turned and locked the door into the hall. I was absolutely unable to speak. I tried once, but my tongue hit the roof of my mouth like the clapper of a bell.
“Now,” he said, when he had turned around. “I wish you would tell me some good reason why I should not hand you over to the Police.”
“Oh, please don’t!” I said.
“That’s eloquent. But not a reason. I’ll sit downand give you a little time. I take it, you did not expect to find me here.”
“I’m in the wrong apartment. That’s all,” I said. “Maybe you’ll think that’s an excuse and not a reason. I can’t help it if you do.”
“Well,” he said, “that explains some things. It’s pretty well known, I fancy, that I have little worth stealing, except my good name.”
“I was not stealing,” I replied in a sulky manner.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Itisan ugly word. We will strike it from the record. Would you mind telling me whose apartment you intended to—er—investigate? If this is the wrong one, you know.”
“I was looking for a Letter.”
“Letters, letters!” he said. “When will you women learn not to write letters. Although”—he looked at me closely—“you look rather young for that sort of thing.” He sighed. “It’s born in you, I daresay,” he said.
Well, for all his patronizing ways, he was not very old himself.
“Of course,” he said, “if you are telling the truth—and it sounds fishy, I must say—it’s hardly a Police matter, is it? It’s rather one for diplomasy. But can you prove what you say?”
“My word should be suficient,” I replied stiffly. “How do I know thatyoubelong here?”
“Well, you don’t, as a matter of fact. Suppose you take my word for that, and I agree to beleive what you say about the wrong apartment. Even then it’s ratherunusual. I find a pale and determined looking young lady going through my desk in a business-like manner. She says she has come for a Letter. Now the question is, is there a Letter? If so, what Letter?”
“It is a love letter,” I said.
“Don’t blush over such a confession,” he said. “If it is true, be proud of it. Love is a wonderful thing. Never be ashamed of being in love, my child.”
“I am not in love,” I cried with bitter furey.
“Ah! Then it is notyourletter!”
“I wrote it.”
“But to simulate a passion that does not exist—that is sackrilege. It is——”
“Oh, stop talking,” I cried, in a hunted tone. “I can’t bear it. If you are going to arrest me, get it over.”
“I’d rathernotarrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young, so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naïve, that I—won’t you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? And whom you sent it to? That’s important, you see, as it bears on the case. I intend,” he said, “to be judgdicial, unimpassioned, and quite fair.”
“I wrote a love letter,” I explained, feeling rather cheered, “but it was not intended for any one. Do you see? It was just a love letter.”
“Oh,” he said. “Of course. It is often done. And after that?”
“Well, it had to go somewhere. At least I felt that way about it. So I made up a name from some malted milk tablets——”
“Malted milk tablets!” he said, looking bewildered.
“Just as I was thinking up a name to send it to,” I explained, “Hannah—that’s mother’s maid, you know—brought in some hot milk and some malted milk tablets, and I took the name from them.”
“Look here,” he said, “I’m unpredjudiced and quite calm, but isn’t the ‘mother’s maid’ rather piling it on?”
“Hannah is mother’s maid, and she brought in the milk and the tablets. I should think,” I said, growing sarcastic, “that so far it is clear to the dullest mind.”
“Go on,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “You named the letter for your mother’s maid—I mean for the malted milk. Although you have not yet stated the name you chose; I never heard of any one named Milk, and as to the other, while I have known some rather thoroughly malted people—however, let that go.”
“Valentine’s tablets,” I said. “Of course, you understand,” I said, bending forward, “there was no such Person. I made him up. The Harold was made up too—Harold Valentine.”
“I see. Not clearly, perhaps, but I have a gleam of intellagence.”
“But, after all, therewassuch a person. That’s clear, isn’t it? And now he considers that we are engaged, and—and he insists on marrying me.”
“That,” he said, “is realy easy to understand. Idon’t blame him at all. He is clearly a person of diszernment.”
“Of course,” I said bitterly, “you would be onhisside. Every one is.”
“But the point is this,” he went on. “If you made him up out of the whole cloth, as it were, and there was no such Person, how can there be such a Person? I am merely asking to get it all clear in my head. It sounds so reasonable when you say it, but there seems to be something left out.”
“I don’t know how he can be, but heis,” I said, hopelessly. “And he is exactly like his picture.”
“Well, that’s not unusual, you know.”
“It is in this case. Because I bought the picture in a shop, and just pretended it was him. (He?) And itwas.”
He got up and paced the floor.
“It’s a very strange case,” he said. “Do you mind if I light a cigarette? It helps to clear my brain. What was the name you gave him?”
“Harold Valentine. But he is here under another name, because of my Familey. They think I am a mere child, you see, and so of course he took anom de plume.”
“Anom de plume? Oh I see! What is it?”
“Grosvenor,” I said. “The same as yours.”
“There’s another Grosvenor in the building. That’s where the trouble came in, I suppose. Now let me get this straight. You wrote a letter, and somehow or other he got it, and now you want it back. Stripped ofthe things that baffle my intellagence, that’s it, isn’t it?”
I rose in excitement.
“Then, if he lives in the building, the letter is probably here. Why can’t you go and get it for me?”
“Very neat! And let you slip away while I am gone?”
I saw that he was still uncertain that I was telling him the truth. It was maddening. And only the Letter itself could convince him.
“Oh, please try to get it,” I cried, almost weeping. “You can lock me in here, if you are afraid I will run away. And he is out. I know he is. He is at the Club ball.”
“Naturaly,” he said “the fact that you are asking me to compound a felony, commit larceny, and be an accessery after the fact does not trouble you. As I told you before, all I have left is my good name, and now——!”
“Please!” I said.
He stared down at me.
“Certainly,” he said. “Asked in that tone, Murder would be one of the easiest things I do. But I shall lock you in.”
“Very well,” I said meekly. And after I had described it—the Letter—to him he went out.
I had won, but my triumph was but sackcloth and ashes in my mouth. I had won, but at what a cost! Ah, how I wished that I might live again the past few days! That I might never have started on my Pathof Deception! Or that, since my intentions at the start had been so inocent, I had taken another photograph at the shop, which I had fancied considerably but had heartlessly rejected because of no mustache.
He was gone for a long time, and I sat and palpatated. For what if H. had returned early and found him and called in the Police?
But the latter had not occurred, for at ten minutes after one he came back, entering by the window from a fire-escape, and much streaked with dirt.
“Narrow escape, dear child!” he observed, locking the window and drawing the shade. “Just as I got it, your—er—gentleman friend returned and fitted his key in the lock. I am not at all sure,” he said, wiping his hands with his handkerchief, “that he will not regard the open window as a suspicious circumstance. He may be of a low turn of mind. However, all’s well that ends here in this room. Here it is.”
I took it, and my heart gave a great leap of joy. I was saved.
“Now,” he said, “we’ll order a taxicab and get you home. And while it is coming suppose you tell me the thing over again. It’s not as clear to me as it ought to be, even now.”
So then I told him—about not being out yet, and Sis having flowers sent her, and her room done over, and never getting to bed until dawn. And that they treated me like a mere Child, which was the reason for everything, and about the Poem, which he considered quite good. And then about the Letter.
“I get the whole thing a bit clearer now,” he said. “Of course, it is still cloudy in places. The making up somebody to write to is understandable, under the circumstances. But itisodd to have had the very Person materialise, so to speak. It makes me wonder—well, how about burning the Letter, now we’ve got it? It would be better, I think. The way things have been going with you, if we don’t destroy it, it is likely to walk off into somebody else’s pocket and cause more trouble.”
So we burned it, and then the telephone rang and said the taxi was there.
“I’ll get my coat and be ready in a jiffey,” he said, “and maybe we can smuggle you into the house and no one the wiser. We’ll try anyhow.”
He went into the other room and I sat by the fire and thought. You remember that when I was planning Harold Valentine, I had imagined him with a small, dark mustache, and deep, passionate eyes? Well, this Mr. Grosvenor had both, or rather, all three. And he had the loveliest smile, with no dimple. He was, I felt, exactly the sort of man I could die for.
It was too tradgic that, with all the world to choose from, I had not taken him instead of H.
We walked downstairs, so as not to give the elevator boy a chance to talk, he said. But he was asleep again, and we got to the street and to the taxicab without being seen.
Oh, I was very cheerful. When I think of it—butI might have known, all along. Nothing went right with me that week.
Just before we got to the house he said:
“Goodnight and goodbye, little Barbara. I’ll never forget you and this evening. And save me a dance at your coming-out party. I’ll be there.”
I held out my hand, and he took it and kissed it. It was all perfectly thrilling. And then we drew up in front of the house and he helped me out, and my entire Familey had just got out of the motor and was lined up on the pavment staring at us!
“All right, are you?” he said, as coolly as if they had not been anywhere in sight. “Well, good night and good luck!” And he got into the taxicab and drove away, leaving me in the hands of the Enemy.
The next morning I was sent back to school. They never gave me a chance to explain, for mother went into hysterics, after accusing me of having men dangling around waiting at every corner. They had to have a doctor, and things were awful.
The only person who said anything was Sis. She came to my room that night when I was in bed, and stood looking down at me. She was very angry, but there was a sort of awe in her eyes.
“My hat’s off to you, Barbara,” she said. “Where in the world do you pick them all up? Things must have changed at school since I was there.”
“I’m sick to death of the Other Sex,” I replied languidley. “It’s no punishment to send me away. I need a little piece and quiet.” And I did.
CONCLUSION:
All this holaday week, while the girls are away, I have been writing this Theme, for Literature class. To-day is New Years and I am putting in the finishing touches. I intend to have it tiped in the village and to send a copy to father, who I think will understand, and another copy, but with a few lines cut, to Mr. Grosvenor. The nice one. There were some things he did not quite understand, and this will explain.
I shall also send a copy to Carter Brooks, who came out handsomly with an apoligy this morning in a letter and a ten pound box of Candy.
His letter explains everything. H. is a real person and did not come out of a Cabinet. Carter recognized the photograph as being one of a Mr. Grosvenor he went to college with, who had gone on the stage and was playing in a stock company at home. Only they were not playing Xmas week, as business, he says, is rotten then. When he saw me writing the letter he felt that it was all a bluff, especialy as he had seen me sending myself the violets at the florists.
So he got Mr. Grosvenor, the blonde one, to pretend he was Harold Valentine. Only things slipped up. I quote from Carter’s letter:
“He’s a bully chap, Bab, and he went into it for a lark, roses and poems and all. But when he saw that you took it rather hard, he felt it wasn’t square. Hewent to your father to explain and apologized, but your father seemed to think you needed a lesson. He’s a pretty good Sport, your father. And he said to let it go on for a day or two. A little worry wouldn’t hurt you.”
“He’s a bully chap, Bab, and he went into it for a lark, roses and poems and all. But when he saw that you took it rather hard, he felt it wasn’t square. Hewent to your father to explain and apologized, but your father seemed to think you needed a lesson. He’s a pretty good Sport, your father. And he said to let it go on for a day or two. A little worry wouldn’t hurt you.”
However, I do not call it being a good sport to see one’s daughter perfectly wreched and do nothing to help. And more than that, to willfully permit one’s child to suffer, and enjoy it.
But it was father, after all, who got the Jolt, I think, when he saw me get out of the taxicab.
Therefore I will not explain, for a time. A little worry will not hurt him either.
I will not send him his copy for a week.
Perhaps, after all, I will give him somthing to worry about eventually. For I have recieved a box of roses, with no card, but a pen and ink drawing of a Gentleman in evening clothes crawling onto a fire-escape through an open window. He has dropped his Heart, and it is two floors below.
My narative has now come to a conclusion, and I will close with a few reflections drawn from my own sad and tradgic Experience. I trust the Girls of this School will ponder and reflect.
Deception is a very sad thing. It starts very easy, and without Warning, and everything seems to be going all right, and No Rocks ahead. When suddenly the Breakers loom up, and your frail Vessel sinks,with you on board, and maybe your dear Ones, dragged down with you.
Oh, what a tangeled Web we wieve,When first we practice to decieve.Sir Walter Scott.
Oh, what a tangeled Web we wieve,When first we practice to decieve.Sir Walter Scott.
Oh, what a tangeled Web we wieve,When first we practice to decieve.Sir Walter Scott.
WE have been requested to write, during this vacation, a true and varacious account of a meeting with any Celebrity we happened to meet during the summer. If no Celebrity, any interesting character would do, excepting one’s own Familey.
But as one’s own Familey is neither celebrated nor interesting, there is no temptation to write about it.
As I met Mr. Reginald Beecher this summer, I have chosen him as my Subject.
Brief history of the Subject: He was born in 1890 at Woodbury, N. J. Attended public and High Schools, and in 1910 graduated from Princeton University.
Following year produced first Play in New York, called Her Soul. Followed this by the Soul Mate, and this by The Divorce.
Description of Subject. Mr. Beecher is tall and slender, and wears a very small dark Mustache. Although but twenty-six years of age, his hair on close inspection reveals here and there a Silver Thread. His teeth are good, and his eyes amber, with small flecks of brown in them. He has been vacinated twice.
It has always been one of my chief ambitions tomeet a Celebrity. On one or two occasions we have had them at school, but they never sit at the Junior’s table. Also, they are seldom connected with either the Drama or The Movies (a slang term but aparently taking a place in our Literature).
It was my intention, on being given this subject for my midsummer theme, to seek out Mrs. Bainbridge, a lady Author who has a cottage across the bay from ours, and to ask the privelege of sitting at her feet for a few hours, basking in the sunshine of her presence, and learning from her own lips her favorite Flower, her favorite Poem and the favorite child of her Brain.
Of all those arts in which the wise excel,Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.Duke of Buckingham
Of all those arts in which the wise excel,Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.Duke of Buckingham
Of all those arts in which the wise excel,Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.Duke of Buckingham
I had meant to write my Theme on her, but I learned in time that she was forty years of age. Her work is therefore done. She has passed her active years, and I consider that it is not the past of American Letters which is at stake, but the future. Besides, I was more interested in the Drama than in Literature.
Posibly it is owing to the fact that the girls think I resemble Julia Marlowe, that from my earliest years my mind has been turned toward the Stage. I am very determined and fixed in my ways, and with me to decide to do a thing is to decide to do it. I am not of a romantic Nature, however, and as I learned of the dangers of the theater, I drew back. Even a strong nature, such as mine is, on occassions, can be influenced. I therefore decided to change my plans, and to write Plays instead of acting in them.
At first I meant to write Comedies, but as I realized the graveity of life, and its bitterness and disapointments, I turned naturaly to Tradgedy. Surely, as dear Shakspeare says:
The world is a stageWhere every man must play a part,And mine a sad one.
The world is a stageWhere every man must play a part,And mine a sad one.
The world is a stageWhere every man must play a part,And mine a sad one.
This explains my sinsere interest in Mr. Beecher. His Works were all realistic and sad. I remember that I saw the first one three years ago, when a mere Child, and became violently ill from crying and had to be taken home.
The school will recall that last year I wrote a Play, patterned on The Divorce, and that only a certain narowness of view on the part of the faculty prevented it being the Class Play. If I may be permited to express an opinion, we of the class of 1917 are not children, and should not be treated as such.
Encouraged by the Aplause of my class-mates, and feeling that I was of a more serious turn of mind than most of them, who seem to think of pleasure only, I decided to write a play during the summer. I would thus be improving my Vacation hours, and, I considered, keeping out of mischeif. It was pure idleness which had caused my Trouble during the last Christmas holidays. How true it is that the Devil finds work for idle Hands!
With a Play and this Theme I beleived that the Devil would give me up as a totle loss, and go elsewhere.
How little we can read the Future!
I now proceed to an account of my meeting and acquaintence with Mr. Beecher. It is my intention to conceal nothing. I can only comfort myself with the thought that my Motives were inocent, and that I was obeying orders and secureing material for a theme. I consider that the atitude of my Familey is wrong and cruel, and that my sister Leila, being only 20 months older, although out in Society, has no need to write me the sort of letters she has been writing. Twenty months is twenty months, and not two years, although she seems to think it is.
I returned home full of happy plans for my vacation. When I look back it seems strange that the gay and inocent young girl of the train can have been I. So much that is tradgic has since happened. If I had not had a cinder in my eye things would have been diferent. But why repine? Fate frequently hangs thus on a single hair—an eye-lash, as one may say.
Father met me at the train. I had got the aformentioned cinder in my eye, and a very nice young man had taken it out for me. I still cannot see what harm there was in our chating together after that, especialy as we said nothing to object to. But father looked very disagreeable about it, and the young man went away in a hurry. But it started us off wrong,although I got him—father—to promise not to tell mother.
“I do wish you would be more careful, Bab,” he said with a sort of sigh.
“Careful!” I said. “Then it’s not doing Things, but being found out, that matters!”
“Careful in your conduct, Bab.”
“He was a beautiful young man, father,” I observed, sliping my arm through his.
“Barbara, Barbara! Your poor mother——”
“Now look here, father,” I said. “If it was mother who was interested in him it might be troublesome. But it is only me. And I warn you, here and now, that I expect to be thrilled at the sight of a Nice Young Man right along. It goes up my back and out the roots of my hair.”
Well, my father is a real Person, so he told me to talk sense, and gave me twenty dollars, and agreed to say nothing about the young man to mother, if I would root for Canada against the Adirondacks for the summer, because of the Fishing.
Mother was waiting in the hall for me, but she held me off with both hands.
“Not until you have bathed and changed your clothing, Barbara,” she said. “I have never had it.”
She meant the whooping cough. The school will recall the epademic which ravaged us last June, and changed us from a peaceful institution to what sounded like a dog show.
Well, I got the same old room, not much fixed up,but they had put up diferent curtains anyhow, thank goodness. I had been hinting all spring for new Furnature, but my Familey does not take a hint unless it is cloroformed first, and I found the same old stuff there.
They beleive in waiting until a girl makes her Début before giving her anything but the necessarys of life.
Sis was off for a week-end, but Hannah was there, and I kissed her. Not that I’m so fond of her, but I had to kiss sombody.
“Well, Miss Barbara!” she said. “How you’ve grown!”
That made me rather sore, because I am not a child any longer, but they all talk to me as if I were but six years old, and small for my age.
“I’ve stopped growing, Hannah,” I said, with dignaty. “At least, almost. But I see I still draw the nursery.”
Hannah was opening my suitcase, and she looked up and said: “I tried to get you the Blue room, Miss Bab. But Miss Leila said she needed it for house Parties.”
“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t care anything about Furnature. I have other things to think about, Hannah; I want the school room Desk up here.”
“Desk!” she said, with her jaw drooping.
“I am writing now,” I said. “I need a lot of ink, and paper, and a good Lamp. Let them keep the Blue room, Hannah, for their selfish purposes. I shall be happy in my work. I need nothing more.”
“Writing!” said Hannah. “Is it a book you’re writing?”
“A Play.”
“Listen to the child! A Play!”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Listen, Hannah,” I said. “It is not what is outside of us that matters. It is what is inside. It is what we are, not what we eat, or look like, or wear. I have given up everything, Hannah, to my Career.”
“You’re young yet,” said Hannah. “You used to be fond enough of the Boys.”
Hannah has been with us for years, so she gets rather talkey at times, and has to be sat upon.
“I care nothing whatever for the Other Sex,” I replied hautily.
She was opening my suitcase at the time, and I was surveying the chamber which was to be the seen of my Literary Life, at least for some time.
“Now and then,” I said to Hannah, “I shall read you parts of it. Only you mustn’t run and tell mother.”
“Why not?” said she, pearing into the Suitcase.
“Because I intend to deal with Life,” I said. “I shall deal with real Things, and not the way we think them. I am young, but I have thought a great deal. I shall minse nothing.”
“Look here, Miss Barbara,” Hannah said, all at once, “what are you doing with this whiskey Flask? And these socks? And—you come right here, and tell me where you got the things in this Suitcase.”
I stocked over to the bed, and my blood frose in my vains.It was not mine.
Words cannot fully express how I felt. While fully convinsed that there had been a mistake, I knew not when or how. Hannah was staring at me with cold and accusing eyes.
“You’re a very young Lady, Miss Barbara,” she said, with her eyes full of Suspicion, “to be carrying a Flask about with you.” I was as puzzled as she was, but I remained calm and to all apearances Spartan.
“I am young in years,” I remarked. “But I have seen Life, Hannah.”
Now I meant nothing by this at the time. But it was getting on my nerves to be put in the infant class all the time. The Xmas before they had done it, and I had had my revenge. Although it had hurt me more than it hurt them, and if I gave them a fright I gave myself a worse one. As I said at that time: